Service Learning, Chemistry, and the Environmental Connections

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Service Learning, Chemistry, and the Environmental Connections Elizabeth S. Roberts-Kirchhoff,* Mark A. Benvenuto, and Matthew J. Mio University of Detroit Mercy, Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry, 4001 W. McNichols Road, Detroit, Michigan 48221-3038 *E-mail: [email protected].

An overview of service learning is presented, with emphasis on how service learning applies in college-level chemistry courses, and how environmental chemistry and awareness can be related to the area of community service.

Introduction The professor stands, as professors and lecturers have done in countless places at countless times since the founding of the University of Bologna in the year 1088, and talks. And talks. And talks some more. At the best, students are enraptured by the lecture, and leave smarter than when they walked into the lecture hall. At the worst, they fall asleep or are unmotivated to return to the next course meeting. Lecturing in the college classroom may be one of the biggest continuing paradoxes of higher education: it can work very well and be effective, and apparently has done so for nearly a millennium. But the exact same model and delivery method can be completely ineffective. One can imagine that professors and teachers have been trying to improve the learning experience almost since its inception. Numerous tools have been developed in attempts to make learning a richer, more meaningful experience. Freeman and colleagues performed a meta-analysis of 225 different studies on the impact of active learning techniques or the traditional lecture format on students’ test scores and failure rates in undergraduate science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) courses (1). In courses with some format of active learning, the average test score increased by 6 %. In addition, the students in traditional lecture courses were © 2014 American Chemical Society In Service Learning and Environmental Chemistry: Relevant Connections; Mio, et al.; ACS Symposium Series; American Chemical Society: Washington, DC, 2014.


more likely to fail than in a course with active-learning techniques (1). Active learning strategies can include collaborative problem solving, personal response systems, studio courses, ConcepTests, case method teaching, and service learning. Ten active-learning strategies were reviewed by Kuh as high-impact educational practices (2). These were defined as high impact since participation in these activities resulted in increases in student engagement, grade point averages, and retention. Most importantly, all students benefited in some way and there was a higher impact for historically underserved students. The high-impact active-learning strategies included first-year seminars, common intellectual experiences, learning communities, writing-intensive courses, collaborative projects, undergraduate research, global learning, service learning, internships, and capstone projects (2). One of these active-learning activities, service learning, attempts to increase learning, and at the same time engage students with their greater community (3, 4). Service learning is generally defined as a combination of active learning and practice, most often serving the community. In the strongest cases, service learning is coupled with substantive reflection, making obvious connections to the role a university plays in society, and sometimes fulfilling a religious mission. Service learning has in many cases deepened such connections. In addition, depending on how the service learning is structured, it may involve more than one of the ten high-impact pedagogical practices (1). That is, the service-learning activity could also involve a learning community, a collaborative project, or global learning especially with regard to civic responsibility or social justice issues. Service learning is more, however, than simply active participation in some local activity or event and a connection to class work. There is almost always some form of reflection on the part of the students to help connect what they have done with the course content or on their personal growth. This is one of the reasons that service learning has been utilized as long and as widely as it has in liberal arts courses (3, 4). Numerous composition classes, as well as classes on such topics as ethics and religious studies, incorporate some form of reflection, and service learning provides the experience upon which to draw. Thus, to many, it seems that service learning is confined to the liberal arts, simply because it is straightforward to add reflection to the traditional disciplines of the humanities.

Environmental Connections and Incorporation of Service Learning into Chemistry Courses The science and engineering disciplines have obvious connections to community involvement that lend themselves to the use of service learning. While there are several broad thrusts for chemistry professors who wish to use such techniques, two that have become rather common are: utilizing college students as teachers or mentors to younger students in the greater community (5–11); and second, performing some form of local environmental monitoring or analysis in a chemistry course (12–19). The science and engineering link to environmental awareness may go back as far as the publication of Rachel Carson’s, Silent Spring 2 In Service Learning and Environmental Chemistry: Relevant Connections; Mio, et al.; ACS Symposium Series; American Chemical Society: Washington, DC, 2014.


(20). Chemists have found that soil, water, and air monitoring and analyses can serve as excellent connections to their course work, and that service learning is a very good tool to make these connections (19). Like many techniques and tools, service learning within chemistry courses is a way to help students supplement their education with a lasting appreciation for the subject matter they have learned. Perhaps the reason the traditional lecture continues to be a mainstay of higher education is because the students, faculty, and administrators are all very used to it. Adding a service-learning component to many chemistry courses may not be difficult, though. While it requires extra time outside the lecture hall or teaching laboratory, this increase appears to be more than offset by the depth of student learning, and by what experiences they take away from the course. The learned connections can be as varied as the faculty members who teach different chemistry lecture or lab courses, or who engage in associated research projects (5–19).

Summary There are many ways in which service learning can be incorporated into the chemistry curriculum, whether in the traditional lecture class, in laboratory classes, or in research projects. Environmental chemistry connections are also unmistakable, and serve as studies that are both practical and of concern to our students and other members of our communities. All such techniques and scenarios can enrich a student’s learning experience, and be beneficial to some segment of the local population as well. In short, service learning can help move the study of chemistry away from a model that has in some way been practiced since the year 1088 — one might say away from all the Bologna — to meaningful interactions with our students that involve both learning and raising awareness of conditions in their shared environment. Service learning, therefore, is a powerful tool by which chemists can effect both pedagogical and social change.

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Service Learning, Chemistry, and the Environmental Connections

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